I am cold and shivery and have been craving summer like nobody’s business. In my desperation, curled up in front of the fire, I close my eyes and imagine sitting outside, sun on my cheeks, bare feet tickled by the grass, the occasional flutter of a bird’s wing and drifting clouds filling my vision.

The soundtrack to this day dreaming is Gecko Turner’s Guapapasea! Oh how this sounds of summer! It is wiggle until you jump out of your seat and dance, roll the windows down, crank the volume music. He is a mix master of the royal degree, using Afro-Cuban, jazz, pop, and plain dreaminess to enchant the listener through the dozen tracks.

Sung mostly in Spanish, and therefore, mostly foreign and vacation-like, it makes me reminisce about my honeymoon (nearly sixteen years ago!) and our wanderings through Spain. Warm and wonderful, eating kilo after kilo of cherries and paella, then washing it all down with the fantastically mouth puckering Kas Limon. Sweet summer perfection and a very grand time.

So, if, like me, you want a little summer right now, but aren’t scheduled on a flight to paradise, cozy up, put the music on, and dream away…

Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe. Imagine if you like, Frankenstein’s monster on its slab. Here comes lightening, not from the sky but from a humble paragraph of English words. Maybe it’s the first really good paragraph you wrote, something so fragile and yet full of possibility that you are frightened. You feel as Victor Frankenstein must have when the dead conglomeration of sewn-together spare parts suddenly opened its watery yellow eyes. Oh my God, it’s breathing, you realize. Maybe it’s even thinking. What in hell’s name do I do next?

How’s that for a bit of illiteration? Even better is the crispy kale itself. Sorry, the above picture does not actually contain any, but I thought I’d at least try to make your mouth water a little. That was dinner on Saturday, Mediterranean style – beef with a sherry reduction, sauteed onion and jalapeno, hummus made with butter beans because we were out of garbanzos (try it – yum!), and assorted crunchiness including pickles that I made last summer. Gosh they’re good.

Anyway, to the crispy kale. I saw this recipe while I was rowing in the basement. Jacques Pepin made some on his More Fast Food My Way. I was very intrigued and luckily had some kale in the fridge.

1 small bunch kale, ribs removed, and torn into 2″ pieces

olive oil

salt

Preheat your oven to 250. Toss the kale in enough olive oil to lightly coat it, then sprinkle with salt. Place a rack on a baking sheet and evenly distribute the kale. Do your best to make sure the pieces don’t overlap because where they do, it won’t be as crispy. We want crispy!

Place the pan in the oven and bake for 25 minutes. The kale will shrink up and get very dark. Remove from the oven. Your choice here – start snacking or wait until cool. We went to town the moment we took them out. Lighter than a chip, crispy, and crazy good! Unless you have multiple racks and baking sheets to make more than one batch, the bummer part is that it is devoured within minutes. Enjoy!

Ooh, this is an interesting one about the transformational power of art, in particular, music. A man, Tom, played perfectly by the dreamy Romain Duris, is a bit of a creep. He gets in bar fights and uses women. He’s in real estate, but not what one typically thinks. His is the shady underbelly of the business in Paris, where he and his colleagues have no qualms about making deals in the night or using unorthodox means to entice people to leave their homes. He’s his father’s son.

In stark contrast, his deceased mother was a rather accomplished classical pianist, and one night he, rather serendipitously, meets her former agent, where he, surprisingly, remembers Tom and his talent as a young man and suggests an audition. Tom need only pick the date.

What ensues is Tom’s progression from thug to real man. He begins to distance himself from that which is most destructive, making choices more akin to a man of integrity, with some missteps, too. He’s not perfect.

Now to what I love most about this movie – Tom’s deep connection to music of all kinds. He’s always listening, but it is more than that – it’s a visceral and emotional experience. He puts everything he has into the listening and the playing. In many ways, after that fortuitous meeting with his mother’s former agent, it becomes his compass, leading him to a better life.